The March issue of the Catholic Courier features a misleading letter to the editor regarding voting and conscience. The writer states that it is alright for a Catholic to vote for a pro-abortion candidate as long the voter doesn’t intend to support that aspect of the candidate’s agenda. He goes on to say that when no candidate’s positions completely conform to Catholic teaching, the voter may choose based on the “common good”. The writer uses the somewhat ambiguous document, Faithful Citizenship, to justify his position.

Cardinal Ratzinger attempted to clarify this issue in a letter that he wrote to Cardinal McCarrick in 2004. The letter identified abortion and euthanasia as “intrinsic evils” and stated that other issues do not carry the “same moral weight” . Cardinal Ratzinger said the life issue must take precedence over issues such as war and capital punishment.

The cardinal went on to say that voting for a pro-abortion candidate is only permissible in the “presence of proportionate reasons”. Cardinal Ratzinger did not go on to clarify those proportionate reasons, but he really didn’t have to. That’s what bishops are supposed to do.

Unfortunately, not all of our bishops are doing their job. That’s why we have confused Catholics who write confusing letters that get published by diocesan newspapers. People read these letters and assume they communicate the Church’s teaching because no one in authority issues a clarification or censure. And, ultimately, we end up with a radical pro-abort as president, voted into office by Catholics of “good conscience”. But, I digress.

Bishop Robert Vasa, Bishop of Baker, Oregon, is not one to let his flock become mired in confusion. This is what he had to say about Faithful Citizenship and “proportionate reasons”:

Describing the deliberation among US bishops over the “Faithful Citizenship” document, he said: “When we were working on the document ‘Faithful Citizenship’, and the issue of whether or not a person’s adamant pro-abortion position was a disqualifying condition, the general sense was ‘yes that is a disqualifying condition’.”

However, during the discussions mention was made of the document by Pope Benedict just prior his elevation to the pontificate which noted that Catholics may in good conscience vote for a politician who supports abortion in the presence of “proportionate reasons.”

Bishop Vasa explained the notion of proportionate reasons, saying, “The conditions under which an individual may be able to vote for a pro-abortion candidate would apply only if all the candidates are equally pro-abortion.”

He added: “And then you begin to screen for the other issues and make a conscientious decision to vote for this pro-abortion candidate because his positions on these other issues are more in keeping with good Catholic values.” In that case, he said, “It doesn’t mean that you in any way support or endorse a pro-abortion position but you take a look in that context at the lesser of two evils.”

Speaking of politicians with a pro-abortion stand he said, “When we have someone who has that stand on a disqualifying issue, then the other issues, in many ways, do not matter because they are already wrong on that absolutely fundamental issue.”

Only when taken to a level of insanity could a ‘pro-war’ candidate be considered on par with a pro-abortion candidate in the Bishop’s view. “If we had a candidate in favor of a war in Iraq in which we decimate the entire population and we kill as many civilians to impose as much terror on everybody as possible to make sure . . . If that was in opposition to a pro-abortion person then I’d have a real conflict of conscience because you’d have a direct and intentional killing of innocent persons on one hand and the direct and intentional killing of persons on the other hand, said the Baker Bishop.

“But we don’t have that issue with capital punishment, we don’t have that issue with the war in Iraq we don’t have that issue with the present Administration,” he added.

So, there you have it. It’s really pretty simple. The only problem with this is that we have many Catholics who become infatuated with particular political candidates. When these candidates have particularly heinous anti-life credentials, some Catholics have to invent ways to justify their support. The preferred way is to pretend that all issues have equal weight, thereby trumping the anti-life position.

The average Catholic layperson who votes erroneously may not be completely culpable in remote material cooperation with evil. They are, in many ways, at the mercy of their bishops and priests.

When our religious leaders refuse to clarify the Church’s teaching or even implicitly seek to counter it, the layperson is left to fend for themselves. This ignorance may be the only thing that saves them from being guilty of grave moral error.

Catholics who prefer to vote for a popular anti-life political candidate at the expense of the unborn, are really saying this to those babies: We’re just not that into you.